


Stars Can't Shine Without Darkness

by stars_and_galaxies



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Different Galaxies, Different Planets, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I promise there's a happy ending, Implied Relationships, Implied Romance, Loneliness, Science Fiction, Separation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9923348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_and_galaxies/pseuds/stars_and_galaxies
Summary: I will reach across the galaxies and find my way to you.or, that story about best friends who just can't leave each other alone, even after the end of the world. There are some fairies involved.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. 
> 
>  
> 
> Terminology: 'LS' refers to Light Speed Technology.

The last time Maxine saw her, they both had their tickets in their hands, ready to board the ship in a few days.

  
“It’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” Small talk, but it was all she could at this point. The unlit cigarette dangled from her lips. She didn’t dare light it, knowing Annora would take it from her lips and squash it beneath her foot and start a whole lecture.

  
“Leaving earth? Yeah, super excited to leave this place so the rest of the idiots can blow it up,” Annora said, but Maxine knew it was the bitterness talking. If there was anyone who loved the earth, it was Annora. She was an environmentalist. A therapist. A botanist. The cute girl who you’d never catch wearing a dorky “eco-friendly: save the earth!” shirt, but who donated every spare penny to trees and animals. Who talked to her potted plants the same way she talked to her patients, low and soft and full of care.

  
“Communication’s gonna be hard. No, real talk, we probably won’t be able to communicate for a good couple months or so. Or however the time up there flows,” Maxine hated this part of herself, hated how she knew the words came from desperation, hated how Annora could see right through them.

  
“Max.” Annora looked her best friend straight in the eye. “It’s gonna be alright. Remember The Cab? The good die young but-”

  
“-the great will always last, I know,” Maxine finished. Maxine meant “great” in ancient Rome. Annora had never let her live that down. Then she smiled, a little ruefully. She wasn’t feeling so great right now.

  
“But I’m not worried about dying, Nora. The LS technology has all been tested. Three ships have already left before us, everyone is fine. I’m worried about-” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and let it out. The cigarette fell over the bridge and into the traffic below. She didn’t finish the sentence. I’m worried about losing you.

  
“It’s gonna be alright, Max.” She repeated, but Maxine wondered why she didn’t reassure her. Why she didn’t say “don’t worry, I’ll be there” or “we’ll see each other again.” She wondered. But it was too late for wondering. It was too late for why’s.

 

* * *

 

 

The year was 2022. Most millennial students had just finished their bachelor’s degree and were on their way to graduate school. Many took gap years, some barreled their way ahead. Maxine was one of those people. Coming from a strict family meant no getting side-tracked. She would work a job if she had to. Education came first.

  
Most wouldn’t have guessed it; she didn’t really give off the “nerd” vibe unless you took into consideration her glasses and her background. She dressed like a punk. No one at college had ever seen her wear a dress, save for graduation. Even then, it was black. She had multiple ear piercings, though not very noticeable as her short black hair fell a few inches below her ears. She smoked when stressed, but she wasn’t proud of it. She did martial arts. She only got high once. Honorable record and stand-star GPA. She loved science, English and foreign languages.

  
Her best friend was Annora Wiles. She looked cute but could destroy you if you looked at her the wrong way. She was always looking for some way to help people, to help the world. She stood for what she believed in. Her brown hair was also short, curling at her nape with bangs swept to the side. She also did martial arts. Her dream was to become a therapist. She detested violence. Her favorite subjects were science, geo-systems, and math. She was two parts lollipop cutie and one part badass, and ever since sixth grade, she hadn’t left Maxine’s side.

  
Maxine moved. They switched schools. They went to different colleges. Many things changed, but their presence in each other’s lives didn’t.

  
But suddenly there was the premonition of change, big change, a bigger change than they had ever seen in their lives. They weren’t oblivious. They may have not gone into politics, but collapsing economies and crashing stock markets and the election of questionable world leaders meant that the people would be looking for someone to blame. Countries pointed fingers. With a fresh batch of talented bachelors stepping into work, the progress Albert Einstein made in his lifetime was made by the new generation in months. Physics majors designed new rocket ships for outer space travel. Chemistry majors delved into the study of further developing atomics. Technology increased. So did tension. So did blame. The youth created. Leaders waited.

  
The surface simmered until a single world was released like a breath in the air.

  
_Nuclear War._

  
At this point in time, nearly every major country was in possession of a nuclear weapon. These weren’t the atom bombs of World War II. These were more massive. Deadlier. Operate a single switch and countries could be obliterated. Flip another switch and entire bands of memory could be erased. History could be altered. This was psychological warfare.

  
“Isn’t it funny how refugees still don’t have fresh water and a roof over their heads but their countries have nuclear weapons?” Annora mused, sitting with Maxine as caught up over coffee.

  
“Yeah,” Maxine agreed, taking a sip of her coffee. “And with all this space travel possible now, it’s almost like they don’t care about the planet anymore. All the people.”

  
Annora hummed and opened her mouth to respond-

  
Their break was over.

  
It was back to life. It always was. No matter how much they cared, their care was left to be words in a poem in a filler of newspaper that printed headlines “Refugees in Syria.” Their care was left to the patients they observed while shadowing doctors and therapists, with sunken eyes and signs of poverty. Their care was when she plucked the cigarette from Maxine’s lips and told her that the cure of cancer hadn’t been found yet. While the world around them raged, their care for it was shown in the ways they made time to have coffee with each other, no matter what.

 

* * *

 

 

It all happened so quickly. Since Britain had left the EU back in 2016, tensions had been strung high. Those who opposed the government were to be smoked out. Security networks were tingling like a live wire. International transfer students were halted from education abroad. One step led to another. A flurry of angry students exploded bombs in London. There were violent scuffles in Austria. North Korea launched a border attack on South Korea after years of carefully kept neutrality. Though over the years the refugee crisis had lessened, terrorist activity in the Middle East had only increased. The EU fell apart. The United Nations failed to take action. War was inevitable.

  
This war was not like its first two sisters. Because unlike them, it was not set up, announced, and fought. The third war had been happening for years. Rather than a mass killing of civilians, it had been a slow breach of the peace of society. The poison of insecurity in people’s mental safe houses. A shadow of doubt in the hopes of humanity. Racism, inequality, violence, narrow-mindedness, and- greed. The military only waited for their orders.

  
And then, a discovery.

  
In a nearby solar system, a planet had been found. A reservoir of water ran in its core. It was the fourth planet from its sun. The whole solar system was only a few light years away, easily reached in a couple of months by the new LS technology. The excited ones wanted to leave. The scared ones wanted to stay. And the ones at the bottom of the chain had to leave; they knew that they would be the hardest hit victims should a war take place.

  
At this point, all that was left was to crash and burn. Countries invested millions of dollars building space ships to travel to the new planet. Each one could hold thousands of people at a time. At the same time, the governments and militias invested even more in building the weapons for a nuclear washout. The threat to each other was clear: You either stayed for the war, and risked death by radiation and memory loss, or you boarded the ship to start a new life.

  
Leaders were coward and corrupt. They had their tickets to the ships secured within weeks, kept secret to the public. The mass populations of the continents began to migrate to the space ship bases. The “representative” leaders of the nuclear war were simply recordings announcing countdowns. The abandonment of earth was half part boredom and half part greed. The world had always been dying anyway, was their logic. Why hold up for the sun to lose its strength? Men were like cockroaches. They would survive anywhere and everywhere.

  
Morals were thrown away. The mass printing of money led to inflation but no one cared. No one wanted to be paid anymore.

  
“Everyone just wants to live,” Maxine said, clutching her ticket application as she waited in line with Annora.

  
“When it comes down to it,” Annora said softly, “The world isn’t about poetry and nostalgia of the home planet. It’s about survival.”

  
It was the first time Annora had ever spoken against saving the earth.

  
There was no saving where they were going.

  
The machine took into account their birthdates, number of family members, and names. Coming from the same region, both Maxine and Annora would board the Flight ships. Maxine’s last name was Kristopolis. Annora’s was Wiles. Maxine would board ship 4. Annora, ship 6.

  
“It’s only two ships away,” Annora reasoned, when Maxine swore at their offending tickets.

  
“Two ships away are also thousands of people away, Nora. Say you lost your ticket and put your last name as something else,” Maxine muttered. Annora laughed.

  
“I’ll be fine, Max. And so will you.”

  
“Fine is what the president said of America. Fine is what everyone said about the state of the world just a few years ago. Clearly, fine is not an appropriate word usable from the dictionary anymore. Fine is the sharpened end of our new weapons Nora, fine is-” She was interrupted by Annora’s hand on her shoulder.

  
“I’m scared too, Maxine,” She said. “You’re not the only one. But if we panic at a moment like this, anything can go wrong. We have to focus. We’re boarding the ship at the end of this week, and within months of settlement, everything will be back to normal. You’ll study. Maybe explore and travel. Hold on to your dream,” She smiled at her but it fell away as she suddenly became solemn. “Hold on to your dream,” She said again, in a harsh whisper, and Maxine felt dumb.

  
Of course Annora was scared too. Their families had stuck together but after them, their friendship was the strongest. There would be time for nostalgia and sadness on ship. Now, they had to keep themselves together.

  
“I will, Nora. Promise you’ll hold on to yours too, okay?” She said, looking at her best friend.

  
“I promise.” Annora had said.

  
It was the only promise Maxine had wished she had broken.

 

* * *

 

 

Maxine boarded the ship. Launch was no more difficult than dealing with a dramatic airplane takeoff. Her family had their own cabin. There were devices to communicate with other ships, but only first class passengers had access to those. Her family was second class.

  
Within days, Earth became fully visible through her window. Not yet distant, but soon to be. She thought of Annora. She thought of earth, and how the nuclear bombs must be going off at this moment. She imagined millions of tress exploding like splintering wood. She spilled her heartache onto paper. She wrote. She wrote and wrote and wrote.

  
It was painful. Watching the planet that had birthed humanity fade into a distant speck. The planet that held the history of humans, destroyed by those very same humans. Who knows how long it would be, when men would begin to forget their origins. Historians would not be enough. Children that had never seen the mother planet would be born. Earth would become a legend. Then, history. Slowly, it would fade to children’s tales. Oceans that extended for thousands of miles would be myth. The generation of people who had seen real, live breathing trees would cease to exist. What was the Amazon? Who were the great leaders of Europe? How was America discovered? Did the Ring of Fire actually exist? She wrote about these fears. She wrote and wrote.

  
Then, sadness. They wouldn’t matter anymore. Life would go on for billions of more years. It was as if all they had cultivated, all the effort and science and love, everything they had pushed and gone through to push humanity forward had fallen through. And now that the slate was too marked up, they threw it away and wanted to start from scratch. She was disappointed, actually. She had wanted to see them go further. Maxine and Annora had both imagined futures where cool flying cars and teleportation and so many other things shaped the 21st century. But they fell short. They couldn’t get that far. Humanity couldn’t get that far. She wrote.

  
Then, anger. It was all because of greed, she thought, seething. Now that they found a new planet where humans could live, no one wanted earth anymore. No one wanted the rising global temperature and flooding coasts. No one wanted the polluted air and the dying animals and angry men fighting each other. No one wanted the breach of solar flares and the thinning atmosphere. No one wanted the disappearing plants and the jammed cities and overheating core. No one wanted all the problems so they chose the ignore it, abandon it. Abandon all their dead and their ancestors; abandon their history and their culture and country and continents. She always believed in science and furthering technology, but not like this. Not like this. Not by being uncaring of how the residue of science harmed the earth. Not by using science to fight others, make war. She wanted science for peace. They’d used science for destruction. She wrote.

  
Then, deflation. She may have been one person, but she could’ve done more. Donated more. Helped more. Gave speeches. Annora would’ve done more. Annora did more. But even Annora could not stop the greed in their hearts. Annora couldn’t stop the violence. The urge to devastate the planet won over their instincts of self-preservation. It had been growing since day one. All they’d needed was an incentive, a reason to leave. The new planet was their incentive.

  
It was named Johannes after the astronomer, Johannes Kepler.

  
Maxine hated the planet before she’d even stepped foot on it.

  
She wrote.

 

* * *

 

 

Johannes looked so much like earth it was sickening. Save for the red dirt and the endless water that was all stored underground, the bushes and plant life looked like it had pulled right out of the Amazon. No other inhabitants. Waters had been tested for pathogen life. Insects and parasites didn’t exist.

  
It looked like what earth would have looked like if they people had left it alone. But it also looked abandoned. Like all forms of life had simply ceased to exist, leaving behind the undergrowth to take over and rule.

  
Ships were planted for about a week as the military and scientists explored and determined the safety of their surroundings. The planet itself was cooler, as it was slightly farther from its sun than earth had been. When Maxine stepped off the ship, a rush of cool air greeted her.

  
Families around her chatted, some excitedly, some nervously. She breathed in the oxygen of the new planet. It smelled like the grass after her dad had just trimmed the backyard. It smelled like the city after it rained, all traces of petroleum vanished to leave behind a clean smell, if only for a moment. The stubborn part of her refused to call Johannes her new home. The part of her that had been looking for home all her life urged her to accept it.

  
Annora would have loved this. The peace of Johannes before the footprints of man delved into it was her dream. She would embrace it, and this time, Maxine knew, Annora would be determined to protect Johannes from the same mistakes of mankind.

  
Ship 5 would coming in a week, ship 6 in three. She could wait.

  
She waited for a month. There had been a delay, as ship 6 had tracked slightly off course. Worry pooled in her stomach and she barely ate for days until they announced that the ship had safely come back on course. When it landed, she had begged her parents to let her greet the new passengers, even though there was so much to be done. Many temporary complexes had been built for the new people to live in until further arrangements were made. She was supposed to be helping them unpack, but her parents let her go.

  
The only other difference on Johannes was that they had no sky. The atmosphere was layered with their essential gases, but it was transparent. And since the water supplies were underground, it had nothing to reflect on. It was always black and stars, but daytime was determined by when they could see the sun and when they could not.

  
So Maxine stood all day. From when she could see the sun and when she could not. Saw every passenger get off ship 6, have their tickets collected and their IDs stamped. Sometime near the end, she spotted a familiar face. She pushed beyond the lines the separated the new passengers from the new settlers.

  
“Mrs. Wiles!” Annora’s mom and her older sister. Annora’s dad had passed away when she was young.

  
“Maxine,” Mrs. Wiles said, but Maxine halted at the sound of her voice. Hollow, empty.

  
“Is Annora still in the cabin?” She asked. She didn’t like the way Mrs. Wiles looked. She didn’t like how her thoughts were all over the place, how her ear piercing itched like it always did when something was wrong.

  
Annora’s sister brushed past her, didn’t look her in the eye, didn’t greet her.

  
The same Annora’s sister who snuck Maxine a twenty whenever she came to their house.

  
“Mrs. Wiles?” Maxine tried again, and her voice didn’t tremor. It shook.

  
“Some people are not destined for this world.” Mrs. Wiles said, and it was so soft, so quiet, that Maxine barely heard it. For a second she thought she was referring to the world in general, but Maxine realized she meant this world. Johannes.

  
The sun’s light shone through the black sky, reflecting on a distant star, and as it set, the rays washed over Maxine and disappeared.

  
Any warmth left in Maxine washed out with it.

 

* * *

 

 

She didn’t try to question why. She didn’t think about the possibilities or reasons Annora could have done it. Did she lose her ticket? Did she get lost? Did she purposefully stay behind? She didn’t ask herself these things. Asking herself would mean inviting thoughts she’d rather not think about. Possibilities she refused to imagine. It would invalidate her writings of missing earth, missing her home.

  
A home that had taken Annora away from her.

  
Meanwhile, Johannes advanced. Buildings were built, accommodations were made, and necessities became accessible. Academic institutions had been built for those who wished to now resume their studies.

  
She didn’t join. She did not want to study a science that no longer existed. Learn about animals and creatures that were only history. Johannes had a self-sufficient system that didn’t require animals. Or insects. Or anything related to biology or chemistry. Diversity dwindled as seven billion people mingled in a combined effort to survive on one planet. LS technology allowed transportation from one end of Johannes to another within minutes. Appreciation for studying past sciences declined, as the focus of the people were used elsewhere.

  
Engineering, exploring, and active duty in the military. Scientists in the field of agriculture and medicine, to help find cures to new diseases and find new ways to make food. These were the limited jobs in high demand during the birth of Johannes.

  
With great fervor of one waiting a long time to do this, and with nothing- and no one – to stop her, Maxine took her old certificates and awards and applications and tore them to pieces. She had wanted, in her life, to live on day, not just survive. Without Annora, and without earth, she wasn’t living. Just surviving.

  
She joined the military. She was taught basic military defense, should any opposing life forms attack. Due to her previous experience in the sciences, she was to go on exploration expeditions into the new territories of Johannes, and observe and record her new findings. On earth, it was her dream to travel, see new places, find new things. This was supposed to be her dream job. Here, the silence of the nonexistent crickets, the lack of sparkle in a waterfall that cascaded into the hollow grounds, the visibility of the stars in the sky appearing like twinkling eyes, crying, always crying- they haunted her.

  
She came back from a particular expedition, exhausted. They had found, indeed, that a type of wild boar of sorts did exist in the dense jungles of Johannes. Except that it was the size of an elephant. They had narrowly avoided what would have been a fatal collision with its pack, by luring the boar out and defeating it while it was isolated.

  
She went straight to her department to announce the new findings, and as she did, the chief looked over her writing.

  
“Maxine, this is all very excellent. However, I know this isn’t something to be picky about, but could you at least…” She raised her eyebrows and turned Maxine’s report over so she could see, “Make the drawing a bit more accurate? The model looks questionable, seeing as I was told the tusks were actually eight feet long, but they look smaller here?”

She showed Maxine her own attempt at drawing what looked like a furry hairball with protruding sticks.

  
Maxine snorted. “I’m here to take down the boar and tell you it exists, not paint a portrait of it. Leave the artsy stuff to Anno…” She stopped herself. The chief tilted her head.

  
“To artsy people,” She muttered, and before the chief could say anything else, gave a quick salute, and walked out the door.

  
She didn’t show up for the rest of the day.

\---

She had been stupid, so, so stupid. She thought that if she delved herself into normal activities, taken up a job, fought until her bones groaned and her energy evaporated, she could erase the ache in her heart? Pretend that she could erase the other half of herself if she acted like it didn’t exist in the first place? It was either drown herself in monotony or let the hurt inside consume her, and she couldn’t bear either.

  
After two years, the planet of Johannes had settled and burst forward. Space ships, hover-cars, telecommunication, nothing was a possibility anymore. It was a reality. The future the earth never got to see. But still, greed, always greed. Are there more planets out there? Like Johannes, like earth, livable, sustainable? Let’s explore. More, more, more.

  
Never enough.

  
After two years in the military, Maxine took off on ship Flight 46 to explore the galaxies. She had been promoted to captain, and was eagerly followed by the younger generation, excited for exploration and new knowledge, new conquests.

  
No one knew she simply wanted to lose herself in the stars.

 

* * *

 

 

Days and months. Following the cycle of hundreds of new suns, new stars, new galaxies. Time passed differently in space. Flight 46 and its crew travelled. Every couple of months, a small portion of her squad returned to Johannes to report their findings. Along the way, they had discovered new life.

  
Humans, kind of. Power of insects, sort of. In short, they looked much like the fairies of storybooks, a small species of human that behaved just like them, except they could fly around on tiny pixie wings and hear things beyond normal hearing range. They had no name for themselves, but they were as determined as diamonds, living on their boulder-sized planet for trillions of years.

  
She named them Norians, for their noble hearts.

  
Because finding a new civilization opened up a whole new set of circumstances, leaders back in Johannes would have to stall explorations and build relations with their new neighbors. Flight 46 came home for the last time, now considered an old ship. At the space port, her squad stepped foot off the ship. They turned, only to find that Maxine had disconnected the hold wires and was now floating away. They called to their captain, shouting, as Maxine used the last of the fuel to propel down one path:

  
The path of a coward.

\---

 

After three years, Maxine allowed herself to break down and weep. She cried for earth and she cried for her family, cried for her squad, cried for the ignorance of human beings. She cried at the unfairness of time and the curse of longevity. She cried because the world had forgotten their roots in a simple span of three years, had never questioned what had happened back on earth, had moved on and buried their past as if it meant nothing. As if all the people left behind had meant nothing. As if Annora had meant nothing. She cried for Annora.

  
She ate. She wandered. She watched the stars. In her solemn, tiny prison of a ship, she replayed songs using what the new generation called “ancient technology.” She drowned in the tunes, listening to them for what seemed like years as they never stopped playing, the electricity renewing itself again and again on the ship. She pretended she was okay. She accepted she was not. There was a storage room in the ship that consisted only of her writings. She wrote until her hand cramped. She took a break until it healed. She wrote again.

  
_Dear Annora_ , one letter had started.

  
_I miss you._ Scratched out, thrown away.

  
_Why did you leave me?_ Blotted out with ink.

  
_Where did you go?_ Crumpled.

  
_You know, sometimes I feel,_ she didn’t finish the sentence.

  
“It never stops hurting.”

  
It never stops hurting, she wrote.

  
Her head whipped up in realization. “Who’s there?” She called, old blades slipping into her hand from inside her sleeves.

  
“It never stops hurting,” The voice repeated, right next to her ear, so smooth she almost confused it for her own thoughts.

  
A little Norian, about the size of her stylus, flew above her shoulder.

  
“It never stops hurting, does it?” He said, speaking her tongue as if he had been on this ship for months, had followed her around and read her writings and heard her rambles and studied her language and- oh.

  
“How long have you been here? Why are you separated from the others? Did you get lost? Are you alright-” The questions spilled forth, worry loosening her lips.

  
“You should be writing these questions to your friend, shouldn’t you?” He said, pointing to the umpteenth letter Maxine had written, addressed to Annora.

  
“She’s not here anymore,” Maxine murmured.

  
“You are not where you are supposed to be, either,” he countered, “Don’t you think your people will worry?”

  
“Who will miss one little girl? And anyway, aren’t you supposed to be with their other Norians as well? Making peace relations with Johannes, or whatever.”

  
“You are missing one little girl.” He said.

  
Maxine opened her mouth, and then closed it, unable to respond.

  
“And anyway,” he shrugged noncommittally, “who will miss one little Norian?”

\---

The Norian’s name, she learned, was something beyond her capability to pronounce. He allowed her to call him Jagger, stating that the “sound combinations coming from your ancient dance device” from that particular track had pleased him. In short, his favorite song from her old playlist had been “Moves Like Jagger.”

  
She learned that he had a mutation different from the other Norians that gave him enormous lifespan. And for Norians, a long time was a really, really long time. He also liked her “pit-za”, though he could only eat a corner of it. He took a specific liking to her usage of the word “jumble” to describe her emotions in one of her letters to Annora. He now used it all the time.

  
“Your head fibers are in a jumble! Brush them!”

  
“Your room is in such jumbles. Not another letter until its cleaned up.”

  
“Jumble jumble,” he tsk-ed, “you haven’t eaten in days. Your body will jumble if you don’t take care of it!”

  
And so, bewildered at this little Norian ordering her around, Maxine got into something that had some semblance to routine. She woke up, ate, showered, and wrote. She had been poised to self-destruct, but after Jagger had told her,

  
“Your friend would not like to see you like this.” She quickly got her act together.

  
Unknowingly, she found, for the first time since Annora’s abandonment, a friend.

 

* * *

 

 

Between spending time with Jagger, writing letters, and cleaning (always cleaning, there’s never such a moment where you have nothing to clean, her mother always told her), time had become an abstract concept. So one day, when she looked out her window and saw a blue and green glowing planet, her heart stopped.

  
“Earth,” She breathed, like a forbidden, unfamiliar word she hadn’t heard for years. She had set the GPS of Flight 46 to route its way to the old planet, and despite its old engine, it had drifted her endlessly through space to her destination. She quickly turned on her transmission signals, expecting the radio satellites from earth to connect. She waited, but nothing happened.

  
“Are you waiting for signals?” Jagger asked, standing behind her and looking curiously at the planet.

  
“Yeah,” She muttered, not really listening, fiddling with the radio, trying to pick something up.

  
“I don’t think you’ll get any. They do not look like they have any signals on. Look. ” He said, and she finally pulled off her headphones and stood next to him, following his pointed finger to the outside.

  
Blue gleamed bright, the oceans still sparkling after all these years. The green –was it her imagination?- more vibrant than before. But the lights, where were the lights-

  
The lights were gone.

  
And Maxine remembered.

  
She’d been so focused on the image of earth she’d had before she left. The illuminating lights of the cities, the way the entire earth lit up like a glowing grid even in space-

  
The nuclear bombs must have actually gone off.

  
She felt her breath being crushed.

  
“Why am I here?” She whispered. “Why am I here? What did I think I was going to find? Did I think I could just escape and come here and find everything just the way I left it-” She cut herself off angrily. The hollow, bitter expanse of the years felt sharper now, reminding her that her agony was all in vain. Nothing could return to the way it was before.

  
“We can go see what is down there,” Jagger soothed, “Maybe their signals are just turned off?” He said, but she knew he was just trying to cheer her up. He didn’t even know what nuclear bombs were.

  
“It’s okay. I’m going to bed.” She mumbled, re-setting the GPS course and hoping that the ship had enough fuel to return to Johannes. She didn’t know, she didn’t care. She would worry about that when she woke up. She didn’t ever want to wake up.

\---

When she awoke, light greeted her. “Turn off the LED’s.” She groaned, pulling a nonexistent blanket over her head. “What the heck?” She cracked open her eyes, hand groping for her blanket and other hand reaching for a cigarette on the table beside her. Both were gone. She looked around, noticing all the LED’s were off and only the two tiny windows that were in the bunker room were open. White light streamed in, beams making the grey metal inside the room shine. Last time she checked, space was as dark as night. Where…?

  
“Good awakening!” Jagger’s overly cheerful voice echoed in the chamber, her eyes failing to try and see him zooming around.

  
“It’s good morning, Jagger. And where…?”

  
“See for yourself,” He gestured towards the window. The metal of the room was cool underneath her feet, causing goose bumps to rise on her bare arms. She squinted at the bright light. Trees. Grass. Nothing she hadn’t seen on Johannes. But the dirt was brown.

  
And the sky was _blue._

  
“You didn’t.” Disbelieving, incredulous.

  
“I-”

  
She didn’t let him finish the sentence as she ran to the control room. The GPS lights were on, the destination clearly changed from what she had set it to before she went to sleep. An “all engines stabilized” light was blinking, which was only on if the ship had landed somewhere. How deep asleep was she that she didn’t hear the ship go through earth’s atmosphere? Flight 46 was a strong ship, but an old model, and surely there had to be some rattling. But the evidence was as clear as day, literally as clear as day. There was only one planet in this universe that she had seen that had a sky so blue, like its endless oceans and bodies of water. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

  
“Jagger,” she said, shaking her head ruefully, “your intentions are good, but I don’t think I’ve ever told you what happened here on Earth. You’ve brought me to a dead planet.” She briefly explained to him the nature of nuclear bombs and what had transpired on earth after she had left.

  
“That must have been so terrible,” He said sadly. “I did not know that. But, it can’t be that dead, if there are plants and other creatures around.”

  
“Creatures?”

  
“There are other small creatures walking around outside,” he said, pointing to his ears, “I can hear them, remember?”

  
Maxine’s eyes widened. She had contemplated radiation poisoning; if the levels were still high then there was no point in going out. But clearly, if creatures were walking around outside, the radiation levels must have subsided. A unison of nuclear bombs exploding would have caused all life to decease, and would leave radiation for hundreds of years, but what she was seeing outside the glass suggested nothing of the sort. She didn’t dare think.

  
“Even if there are,” she said gently, “there is nothing else here. You have to understand that all the things I wrote in my letters were,” she clenched her fist, “hypothetical. I never meant to come back here. That was just me wallowing in my sorrow.” She forced the words out of her mouth, even as her mind screamed _you know you meant to come here_ and _this is your home_ and _you’ve been waiting for this moment even before your ship landed on Johannes_ and even _if you died now you’d be satisfied_.

  
But Jagger surprised her by saying, “Well that is a big jumble for you then. Because I intend to explore.”

  
“What?”

  
“What I mean is, I actually came aboard your ship because I was curious about learning your language and about your people. The Norians at home are learning about the people on Johannes. But I wish to explore further. What better way to learn about you humans than to study your history? Show me your home.” He gestured again towards the outside, and Maxine was struck with the thought that Jagger had better learned to hide his true intentions (to cheer her up) from the ones he outwardly showed (wanting to “explore?” Please, even she knew he had gotten on her ship by accident) better than she had.

  
The girl she had been at twenty three bubbled up inside her; the girl who loved science and chemistry and exploration; the desire to travel and teach people about the world. The curiosity, the sadness, the urge to remember all she had tried to forget. She blamed its resurface on the mere view of her home planet before her eyes.

  
The words “Okay,” spilled before she could control them, and Jagger’s smile was as blinding as the world that awaited her.

\---

“What a lovely place!” Jagger stated, flying around between trees, ducking beneath the high grass and popping back up at random intervals, wings flapping excitedly, completely unaware of Maxine’s internal crisis. “Please hurry! I want to see more!”

  
“Coming,” Maxine said, as if the first breath of oxygen on earth hadn’t caused her to nearly start crying; as if the feeling of the soft brown dirt sinking beneath her space boots didn’t nearly launch her into hysteria; as if the blue sky surrounding her didn’t make her want to never close her eyes again. “I’m coming,” She called again, but she didn’t know if she was talking to Jagger or to the big wide expanse of earth that lay before her.

  
They traveled for three weeks. She kept track of time by the normal rise and fall of the sun once again, which the little Norian had stated was “the most fascinating thing.”

  
“Space is always dark on our planet. Johannes too, I remember.” He said.

  
“Can you imagine,” She murmured, staring at the first sunset she had seen in years, “living in a world without a sky?”

  
“Absolutely unfathomable,” He agreed.

  
Maxine lived in what could only be described as _peace_. They walked around the forests, taking different routes, coming back to the ship when they were close by, and camping out under trees when they wandered too far from the clearing. She purposefully did not let questions about what had occurred pester her head; she wanted to enjoy the purity of earth without the sorrow or the potential fallout possibility hanging over her head. At some point, they encountered an abandoned highway, leading to what seemed like an empty city. Rusted cars sat on the roads. Stoplights hung from limp electric wires. His curiosity peaked. Her reminiscence began.

  
“The vehicles were used to transport people. Their speed was about, say, the distance from our ship to here in a span of minutes,” She explained.

  
“That’s not fast at all! I can fly faster than that,” Jagger exclaimed, and he zoomed to the hanging spotlight, touched it, and came back.

  
She blinked. “Did you even leave?”

  
He winked (he learned that from one of the old shows Maxine watched in the ship) and said: “I’m so fast, you didn’t even see me!”

  
She laughed, and the sound echoed down the empty roads.

  
They had just finished visiting an old library (“Norians should have one of those!” Jagger had exclaimed, liking the story of _Rainbow Fish_ very much) and were making their way back down the road when the sound of an empty tin can falling to the ground startled them.

  
Maxine was immediately on alert, the years of military training kicking into gear. Jagger stood still on her shoulder, his wings making no flapping sound. There was no breeze, so the tin can couldn’t have fallen on its own. Jagger relaxed before her, his sensitive hearing determining the source of the sound.

  
“Oh, it’s just a rab-bite.” He said, and the tension visibly slipped from Maxine’s shoulders as she saw the small brown and white creature hop into the clearing.

  
A bullet whizzed past her ear.

  
“Shit,” She muttered, immediately grabbing Jagger and ducking into the tall grass next to the highway.

  
“What does that mean?” Jagger whispered.

  
“It means be quiet,” She hissed, pressing him close to the pocket on her suit. She had been foolish to leave her portable weapons inside the ship; only old blades lined the inside of her sleeves.

  
“We know you’re there,” A voice called, and from the sound of footsteps, she could tell there were many of them.

  
“We’re used to strangers. Just drop your weapons and show yourself,” Another said.

  
A series of short calculations ran through Maxine’s head. She could run for it, but it was likely she couldn’t make it, because they had guns, and she had only knives. She couldn’t fight them either. She didn’t know if they were bad or good ( _there are people who are still alive!_ her mind said excitedly, but she pushed the thought away), and she didn’t know how well they would react if she told them she was from another planet, and had a fairy friend, and potentially had weapons in a spaceship that could possibly obliterate them (not that they needed anymore obliterating here on earth). So, she went with the most logical decision.

  
She stood up, placing Jagger on her shoulder, her hands up in a gesture of peace.

  
“I come with peace,” She said, and it was funny how now she was the one from an alien planet invading earth, and this was their home, and oh, isn’t that the irony?

  
The band was a group of three boys and two girls, all of them wearing old, torn clothes, and having some form of a red bandana tied on heads, wrists, through belt loops.

  
“Drop your weapons,” The tallest boy said.

  
Maxine dropped her knives to the ground. “I’m just passing through,” She explained.

  
“Do you have a group? And what’s that?” One of the girls asked, nodding at Jagger.

  
She couldn’t tell the truth, so instead she said: “I don’t have a group. This is my friend, Jagger. He’s kind of…new around here, I don’t really know where he came from. But we’ve stuck together for a while now, so.” She shrugged, hoping they would accept her explanation. Jagger didn’t seem to mind, for once sensing he had to be silent.

  
“Oh? You don’t have a group? Everyone has a group. What are you, then?” The same girl said, suspiciously.

  
What was she, indeed. I am one of you. I am human. I am a soldier and a captain and a scientist. I am lost. I am a daughter and a sister and a friend. I am an explorer. I am a coward. I am a spaceship navigator from an alien planet. I am companions with a Norian. I am a user of LS technology. I am twenty five. I am Maxine Kristopolis. I am looking for a place to belong.

  
“I’m a wanderer.” She said.

  
They stood for a moment of reluctance, and slowly began lowering their weapons, when, out of nowhere, Jagger took out a firecracker he had picked up from one of the city’s stores and flung it into the air.

  
Able to do nothing, in those few seconds in which time slowed down, she prayed, _please don’t pop, please don’t pop, please don’t pop, please_ -

  
They popped, sparks shooting left and right, the crackling noises deafening in the silence of the empty highway.

  
The band looked at her.

  
“Um.” She said eloquently.

  
They moved in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More parts coming? Sorry for the cliff? Lots of love!


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes hi hello don't shoot me for lack of update and yes i know there are a million grammar/spelling mistakes i didn't have time to edit i'm sorry this year is difficult for me i'm trying okay 
> 
>  
> 
> "After all, if there is a heaven, we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you." -N.S.

“What in the name of stars possessed you to do that?” She asked tiredly, wanting to rub her forehead with her hands, but couldn’t, as they were tied behind her back. The butt of a long rifle prodded her back to keep her walking.

 

“You said fir-works were for celebration,” Jagger accused, hanging from a small rope that was pinned through the pocket of her suit.

 

“Fireworks. And what, pray tell, made you think this was a time for celebrating?” She was beginning to realize that Jagger actually had no concept of sequence. Were all Norians like this, or was it just him?

 

“You found other humans. Is that not worth celebration?” He asked, genuinely puzzled.

 

She could do nothing but sigh as she walked on, the weight in her bones heavier than before.

 

They walked a distance before one of the girls took off her red bandana and wrapped it over her eyes, and she could hear Jagger’s indignant yelp muffled as he was stuffed into the pocket of her suit.

 

“Privacy measures,” She explained, as if it wasn’t obvious enough. Maxine lost track of time as they continued walking, before she was jerked to a stop. The bandana slipped off her eyes and she blinked, the light bleary and unfocused. An old house came into view, shingles falling off the roof and rust climbing up the pipes like vines. It was a large house, though, and as she quickly assessed her surroundings, she realized that there were many exits and entrances, poorly concealed under patches of dead grass or bushes. Insufficient for an intruder attack, but really, in this world, who was there left to intrude?

 

“Let’s go,” The same girl from before nodded to her, and she walked up the stone steps with dread. She really shouldn’t have left her weapons on the ship. Jagger remained quiet in her pocket.

 

Inside, the house was dimly lit, and she felt a sudden familiar ache at the arrangement of the sofa and the people casually piled on top of it, at the dusty television that lay unused on the entertainment center, at the wall next to the stairs that was chipping paint. The houses in Johannes were much different, with modern spiraling staircases levitating on the walls, and the aquarium-like bathrooms, and the sparkling, dazzling lights that had always blinded her into darkness. But she pushed the feeling away as all eyes turned on her.

 

“We found her wandering outside near the old city,” One of the boys who had brought her here announced. “Said she didn’t have a group, which is strange, but she only had a few blades on her and no group mark or anything,” He said. “She might really be a wanderer, but we brought her here just in case.”

 

 “Yeah, but have you seen her clothes? I’ve never seen anyone around here wear that sort of stuff. And what about the tiny flying thing she has with her? Is it a mutated hummingbird or something? Because I’ve never seen anything like that either,” One of the girls muttered. The room exploded into chatter.

 

Maxine thought it was best to not explain that she was from a different planet. Jagger’s lack of response let her know that he had let the hummingbird comment go.

 

“Enough, you guys,” A slightly louder voice said, and everyone else quieted down. “Care to explain?” Maxine’s head moved towards the sound, but the room was so dim that she couldn’t pinpoint who it had come from. The boy launched into the explanation again, finishing by saying, “What should we do with her, Captain?”

 

A body moved forward, and Maxine didn’t know what she was expecting. The “Captain” stood a full head taller than her, wearing a large jacket and khaki trousers, which had been stuffed into black rubber boots. A long, brown braid hung from her head down her back, but her fringed bangs still curled at her forehead. If Maxine squinted, she could see a few strands had turned gray, and around the hard lines of her mouth, there were slight, barely-there wrinkles, matching ones around the corners of her eyes. She had a large rifle slung across her back, and a red bandana tied through one of her belt loops.

 

The harsh set of her jaw was betrayed by the soft brown in her eyes, which Maxine had always thought looked like milk chocolate. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

 

Jagger peeped out of her pocket.

 

“Do you know Annora?” He asked curiously, softly, no doubt still in the claws of his previous scolding for his untimely outbursts.

 

Annora raised her eyebrow. “I am Annora. And who are you, little guy?”

 

“Jagger!” He said cheerfully.

 

Maxine closed her eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

For all the dramatic ways Maxine had imagined meeting Annora again, this was not one of them. Not like this, her hands tied behind her back, wearing clothes this world had never seen, in a house full of strangers whom she didn’t know she could trust, and without an ounce of recognition in Annora’s eyes. After a short conversation, she had been released, but was still kept in the house for questioning. Jagger was contentedly munching on a small tortilla chip while sitting on her shoulder.

 

“So are you lost?” Annora had asked patiently, the same way she had always asked Maxine to put down her cigarettes, and there were so many words inside Maxine, but they were lodged in her throat and it was difficult to even breathe.

 

“A little,” She had mumbled.

 

“You can stay here, if you’d like. We didn’t think there would be too many wanderers so long after the bombs, but hey, we could always use a new member. You got any skills?”

 

Maxine contemplated telling them she was in the military before the bombs, but decided against it.

 

“I’m…self-taught. I don’t remember much,” She said, hoping it would slide.

 

Annora nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, a lot of people don’t remember much after the bombs went off. Half of these guys were just wandering around totally disoriented when I found them. Can’t say I remember much either, though,” And suddenly, everything clicked into place for Maxine.

 

_Psychological warfare._

 

The nuclear bombs hadn’t been nuclear bombs- instead, they had effectively wiped the memories of nearly all of the remaining population that remained on Earth. Maxine felt sickened. The leaders hadn’t wanted to massacre those who remained, but had intended to cut off all communication and remnants of the home planet, and to sever any chance the people here had to try and follow them or figure out what happened.

 

But that meant Annora didn’t remember her. Or anything before the bombs. Or anyone. At all. She swallowed the bitterness in her throat, and took the opportunity to ask impersonal questions.

 

“I…then-” She fumbled for a moment, “How old are you? What happened after the bombs? I’m sorry, it’s just been so long since I’ve been in contact with others,” She said, which wasn’t a lie.

 

“I’m not really sure, actually,” Annora looked thoughtful for a moment. “I took a guess and said maybe I was in my twenties when I first came to? I couldn’t really remember much besides my name. But it’s been a long time since then. I’m probably close to fifty now, though I wouldn’t like to admit it,” She smiled, and Maxine saw the crinkles she had seen in the dark crease next to her eyes, and it was like the breath had been knocked out of her, because Annora was suddenly…she was suddenly different. There was a weight in her shoulders like she’d been carrying the years on her back, the span of years showing in the way she carried herself. She was older, a woman, who had seen probably so many things, and tended to so many of these kids, and had pushed through for survival, and Maxine felt so tiny. She felt so tiny next to her, like a child, a reckless youth at the mere age of twenty five.

 

She made the calculations in her head. With a start, she realized that time had passed differently in space, on Johannes, and her three years there must’ve been almost thirty years here on Earth, and she had been gone so long, and there was just so many things, so many questions, so much inside her, and _Annora didn’t remember her_ , and Maxine began to feel a little overwhelmed.

 

“I’m sorry,” she managed, “I’m just a little tired, I’ll probably be able to register your story much better if I just…I think I need quick break.”

 

“Oh, definitely! I’m sorry, I’ve been keeping you here, you’re probably exhausted from travelling so long, but don’t worry, you’re safe here,” And Annora smiled at her again, and Maxine had to look away, “We’ve always got a spare room for people who pass by, feel free to stay as long as you like.”

 

One of the taller boys who had brought her here showed her to the room, and she heard the chatter explode behind her again, probably about the mysteriousness of her arrival, and definitely about the nature of Jagger, whose presence they surely hadn’t gotten over.

 

“Can I stay to converse?” Jagger had begged, excited out of his mind to have so many fawn over him.

 

“No,” She told him shortly, and when he had said: “But that’s Annora, is it not? So they are your friends, then,” She said: “That’s not Annora. And we don’t anything about them yet, so it’s better if you stay with me,” Jagger was confused, but when she didn’t respond, he pouted and sulked in their room, but she didn’t feel like dealing with him, so she did the only thing she could: She went to sleep.

 

\---

 

When Maxine awoke from her nap, she stared at the ceiling, for a moment trying to figure out why the LED’s on the ship hadn’t automatically turned on. As she stared longer, the wood of the roof blinked back at her and then she realized, but somehow it was possible that everything just suddenly made less sense. Jagger was still curled around one of the oil lamps, wings twitching as he slept on. Her gaze became soft as she watched him; she hadn’t been the only one overwhelmed by the new environment, and even if she knew Earth, here was this little Norian, thousands of years from his home, accompanying her on this accidental journey. She promised herself she would thank him and try to find him “pit-za” when he awoke.

 

Leaving the door open a crack, she tiptoed to the now-empty hallway, and she could hear the faint snores coming from the rooms, signaling to her that everyone else had gone to bed. She made her way up the stairs, not knowing what she would find, until a left turn led her to a large glass door. Outside, she assumed it was supposed to be a balcony, but the wood had rotted ad most of the veranda had fallen away, too unsafe to stand on. She opened the door and leaned on the glass pane, her fingers automatically reaching and failing to find a cigarette in her pocket, and she cursed softly.

 

“Adrian?” A voice called, and Maxine’s head whipped around.

 

Annora stood next to the stairs, squinting, then relaxing as she realized who she was. “Oh, it’s you. Sorry, I thought you were Adrian. Dumb kid always comes up here to take a smoke even though I told him if I ever caught him with one I’d set fire to his hair,” Annora said, seriously, and for some reason, Maxine laughed quietly.

 

“You don’t like cigarettes? You’d think at your age you would be okay with a bit of smoke.”

 

“Don’t bring my age into this,” Annora muttered, and Maxine laughed again, then quieted.

 

“Sorry, were you going to bed? I don’t mean to keep you.”

 

“No, I’m always up at this time of night. Trying to make sure the boys aren’t up doing something stupid. You’d think they’d be more careful, but I guess youth is like that,” She smiled softly, but it stung Maxine, because she was included in that group now. The person who had manifested herself in nearly all of Maxine’s letters and dreams now stood before her, steady, solid, _real_ , and all she could think about was the span of years between twenty-five and fifty.

 

“Would you mind,” Maxine said softly, “telling me about what happened after the bombs? I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”

 

Annora nodded, and gestured for her to sit down. Something clenched inside Maxine’s chest, as they leaned on opposite ends of the door, the moon surely laughing at her from above, two people, once friends, now strangers; Annora telling her stories and her listening like a child listens to fairytales. Once upon a time, there was big world with many people. There were all kinds of cool advancements, technology beyond her wildest imagination, things like televisions and cars that nobody knew how to use anymore, but people stared at in wonder, ancient beasts preserved like fossils. Then evil leaders took over, and for some reason, they wanted to erase history, and let bombs drop like a single speck that encompassed all.

 

“It was like this really bright light,” Annora explained. “I was so far away from it, I remember, and then it was like the sky was splitting open and everything was so bright, and when I awoke, I was under that same tree where I’d been standing, except I had no idea what I was doing there. I had no clue about my life before. The only reason I knew my name was because I assumed it was this,” She said, pulling out a necklace that looked like a dog tag from underneath her shirt. It was old and scratched and a corner of it looked like it had melted, but on one end it was engraved _Annora_ and when she flipped it over, it read _Noble_ in simple italic letters. Maxine clenched her fist and bit her lip and ignored the burning behind her eyes as Annora continued after a beat.

 

“I lost track of time after that. Maybe a week went by? Maybe two? I don’t know. I was eating random things I could find, it was a surprise that I didn’t accidentally get myself sick.” She trailed off for a moment, the continued: “I found some other people down by a road, and they were just as confused as me. We decided to stick together, and more and more people came. Sometimes some people left, and new people joined. We eventually started walking all over the place trying to find people to help, and we just suddenly became this band,” She shrugged. “It went like that for a couple of years, and some of the old guys I originally came with died of some strange illness. Their hair was falling out and they were coughing up blood, but no one knew what was wrong with them.”

 

Maxine recoiled as she recognized the telltale signs of radiation poisoning.

 

“Things like that happened a lot. We discovered some old medic centers, and tried giving people medicine- sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Eventually the medicine ran out, so we moved again,” She said. “There’s not much else to my story. I’ve just been…wandering like you, I guess,” She smiled ruefully, “But that’s not to say I’m sad, necessarily. I met all these people, and then took in all these kids and I’ve been watching them grow and I hate to say it, but “Captain” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” She laughed. “We’ve been surviving. And in the midst of that, we’ve been living too, you know? Playing pranks and exploring new territory- it almost makes me feel like I’m young again,” She looked at Maxine, then, and there was tranquility in her eyes, one that maybe came with age, or with her life, and Maxine didn’t know what to say, so she nodded and didn’t say anything.

 

They sat there like that for a while, two captains from two different planets, one young and one not quite, one who had just been surviving and one who had been living, one selfish and one selfless, one who had traveled the galaxies and stars and had seen all there had been to see but was still looking for a place to belong, one who had remembered nothing but had seen so much and lived so long and was content in this place she knew as no other than home. One who had seen the death of one planet and the birth of another, and now, was coming to know the rebirth of the dead, one who was young on the outside but so old and weary and lonely on the inside. One who had only ever known one life, one earth, one sky, whose hair was slightly grayed at the roots and lines creased the gently around her face, but there was youth in her heart, there was care and there was life  and there was _peace,_ and Maxine realized with an ache that Annora had not changed at all.

 

Even if Annora had her memory, Maxine knew in her heart there was no point in asking why she had stayed.

 

“I’m…I may have lied a little bit about where I’m from,” Maxine admitted, breaking the silence. She blamed the loosening of her tongue on the presence of an old friend. Annora looked at her curiously, not at all looking like she was nearly fifty years old.

 

“I remember a little bit before the bomb,” Maxine said, deciding it was best to stretch the edges of the story a bit. Annora’s eyes widened. “Wow, really? Not many people do. What was it like? Were there any-” Maxine stopped her by shaking her head.

 

“Only a bit. I just remember little flashes of when I was growing up. And…I had this friend. We were talking about how we should probably leave before the bombs went off. But then…I left. I left to the place where some others would take us away to escape from the bombs in these huge ships, I remember. But…” She trailed off.

 

“Your friend never came?” Annora said gently. Maxine nodded. “She never came, and I don’t even know if the ship even took off or was here when the bombs exploded, but I guess you can say the years after that have been a blur. There’s been no significant thing in my life since then,” She laughed bitterly, because it wasn’t a lie. “I just…all I remembered afterward was that I wanted to see my friend again, and I wanted to find her, and I’ve been searching, but now, I don’t know.”

 

Annora reached over and ruffled Maxine’s hair. “I’m sorry,” She said quietly. There was silence for a while more, and then Annora said:  “It’ll be alright. I’m sure she had a reason. You can stay here as long as you need, and we don’t mind if you stay as a permanent member. If you want to go after this though, we won’t stop you. But know we’re always here with open arms, okay?” She smiled.

 

Maxine nodded gratefully, because honestly, she didn’t really have anywhere to go.

 

They parted ways, Annora getting up to go on to bed. Maxine sat there until she saw the faint husk of daylight, and then went back downstairs to her room and slept- or tried to sleep- for the remaining hours.

 

It wasn’t long until her fitful sleep was interrupted by sounds of life outside her room. There was clamor for bread and scolding’s for children to mind their manners, and fathers telling brothers to be nice to their sisters and girls telling their mother that they didn’t want to braid their hair and kids fighting over slingshots and teddy bears and teens arguing over who would go hunting and the sound of forks clattering and eggs boiling and feet running around and when Maxine opened her door the sight that greeted her was familiar and strange at the same time, because she’d _known_ this life, but she’d been alone for so long she’d almost forgotten. 

 

Jagger sleepily flew over to her shoulder, then looked at the scene outside with wonder.

 

“How fascinating,” He breathed in awe. “Humans are capable of renewing their energy so soon after their awakening? Norians cannot do that.”

 

“Neither can I,” She said, amused, “Younger people have more energy like that. I’m older, so I function slower.”

 

“False,” Jagger said, pointing out, and she followed his line of sight until she saw Annora, who was tying a boy’s shoelaces, and then immediately got up and helped a woman holding too many plates. There was a smile on her face. “She is older. You are simply too slow.”

 

“Well, you just said the entire Norian race is slow after they wake up, so I don’t want to hear that from you,” She muttered.

 

“We are Norians! You are human. But you’re too slow. Slow human, slow human!” He laughed and danced, purposely flying around her in circles as she rolled her eyes.

 

His voice attracted attention, as many kids started pointing at him immediately. “Hey, look! It’s the fairy! Are you a fairy? Mom, I thought fairies didn’t exist! You lied to me!”

 

“What is a fairy?” Jagger asked, at the same time Annora began approaching, probably to warn the kids off.

 

“A fairy,” Maxine said, just because she could, “is a very strong creature that has super strength and is admired by a lot of people.” Jagger’s eyes widened.

 

“I am fairy! I am absolutely a fairy!” He said, singing, flying over to the kids and letting them admire him. Maxine had no intention of telling him that a fairy was actually a small fairytale creature associated with flowers and pixie dust.

 

Judging by Annora’s amused grin, she had heard what Maxine had said and had no intention of correcting her either. “But, really though? Is he a fairy? I’ve seen my fair share of mutated creatures after the bombs but nothing like him before.”

 

Maxine shrugged. “No clue. You learn new things every day, right? Just tell the kids to go easy on the wings.”

 

“Will do,” She said, bumping Maxine’s shoulder, and Maxine fought the urge to recoil away, the gesture so loose and easy- it was just like Annora to become so casual with someone she had just met. She had to get a hold of herself, but how could she hold something that had already slipped away from her grasp?

 

“What’s for breakfast?” She said instead, hoping it would distract Annora from her stiff reaction.

 

“Eggs and bacon, but the second batch of bacon is still frying. Go ahead and sit down and I’ll get you some,” Annora said as they walked towards the table.

 

Maxine wrinkled her nose. “I hate eggs.”

 

Annora stopped and looked at her.

 

“Are you five?”

 

“Sure feel like it, next to you.” She said, hoping her voice came out as teasing, instead of trembling.

 

Annora rounded on her. “Bring up my age on more time, I swear to god,” She said, exasperated, but she was smiling.

 

_“Bring up my age one more time, I swear to god.” Annora said, throwing her hands up. “I’m only like, this much younger than you,” She said, bringing her finger and thumb together._

 

_Maxine laughed. “Yeah, this much, more like this much,” She said, opening her arms broadly. “A whole year! I was walking when you were still in the crib.”_

 

_“I’ll put you in a crib,” Annora muttered, and Maxine laughed harder._

 

“Old lady,” Maxine shot back, ignoring the burn in her eyes.

 

\---

 

Annora didn’t know what to make of her. She may have lost her memory after the bomb, but she wasn’t clueless. Half of the things the girl had said were lies, they _had_ to be, or at least false truths. The girl looked no older than twenty-something, and for her to remember things before the bombs and still be alive…thirty years had passed. The girl had to be around Annora’s own age, which she did not look one bit. The girl, along with the small creature she had brought, had known Annora’s name before they had ever met. _That_ had indeed been strange, as Annora was known for being Captain but certainly not so famous that wanderers would know her. Her clothes were strange. Her accent was strange. The way she unconsciously spoke casually and familiarly with her but recoiled whenever she came near was strange. Everything about her was strange. Annora didn’t know what to think- she had a hunch the girl was of no harm, and couldn’t be anyhow, as they had searched her and taken whatever blades she had on her.

 

Annora watched her now, after breakfast. She sat lounging on the couch, watching a few other teens chatting and a boy playing with his paper airplane on the floor near her feet. Her eyes darted between them all, so careful, so watchful, distant and a little lonely, and Annora thought maybe she wanted to join in the conversation but maybe didn’t really know how. She’d seen lots of things, including kids who had acted similarly before. But the wariness in the girl’s eyes told her that she was no child- no child, not even after the bomb, had looked so hauntingly lost. Annora decided to keep to herself the fact that the guessed the girl’s story to be false. She wandered over, pretending to be there by coincidence.

 

“I never got you name,” Annora said, tapping her gently on the shoulder. She looked up, startled.

 

“It’s Maxine,” She said, looking away.

 

Annora smiled. “Can I call you Max?” Maxine shrugged, but that was stiff too. “Whatever you want.”

 

“Well, Max, why don’t you help me outside? And bring your fairy friend too,” She smiled.

 

\---

 

Maxine was uncomfortable.

 

“I am so fast! Annora, Annora, look at me!” Jagger exclaimed somewhere behind her, no doubt showing off his flying skills.

 

“I can see that,” Annora said bemusedly, picking at weeds and branches scattered across the ground. “Say, are you really a fairy? I haven’t ever seen anything like you before.”

 

“I am actually…” Jagger paused and glanced at Maxine, who pointedly ignored him, so he took that as an affirmative. “I am a Norian! People…Maxine discovered me. I am separated from others like me, though. Everything has been a jumble after the bombs,” He laughed, sounding embarrassed. Maxine was impressed with his ability to create the story on the spot.

 

“Oh, I see. Norian? Is that what you call yourselves?”

 

“Maxine gave us that name,” Jagger said, then promptly lost focus as a stray leaf fluttered down. “Wow, a floating loaf! The plants here naturally shed?”

 

Annora laughed. “It’s a leaf, and yeah, I wouldn’t call it shedding, but it’s close enough.”

 

After some time tending outside, Annora went back inside to start helping the other parents with lunch. Maxine was left alone with Jagger, and she stood staring out into the trees listlessly.

 

“Maxine,” Jagger said, coming to stand on her shoulder, “what is the matter?”

 

“Jagger,” she sighed, “you don’t get it.”

 

“Don’t get what?”

 

“I’m not…what am I supposed to be doing? Annora doesn’t remember me, and I just-” She broke off, frustrated. “What the heck am I doing? I can’t stay here. There’s nothing for me here. What am I supposed to do, live here forever? I know I didn’t think much about it when I first left, but my family could be worried. I know I’ll probably be dishonorably discharged from the military when I go back for abandoning my post, but it’s not like I can do any better here. My ship has no fuel. Do they even have oil reserves here anymore? I left my ship abandoned in a clearing, what am I gonna do if someone finds it? And Jagger, you’re separated from your own people, you can’t keep staying with me, and I can’t stay here, but I can’t go back, and I’m lost, Jagger!” Maxine let out in one harsh breath. “I’m lost.”

 

“Annora…Annora doesn’t remember me. I did all of this on behalf of Annora, but I didn’t take into account that the bombs could be the type that erased memory bands. She probably stayed here on earth because she loved it. She loved earth and she couldn’t bear to abandon it, knowing her, that’s probably why she stayed. She couldn’t leave her home. And I…I left this home, and I left Johannes, and I abandoned everyone and everything for my own selfish desires, and this is where it led me,” She crouched down, for a moment furious- then it dissipated and all that was left was that empty feeling again.

 

Jagger sat down on her shoulder, and leaned against her neck. “Firstly,” he said, not unkindly, “that was the most I have ever heard you speak at once. Secondly, you did not take me away from my people; I appeared on your ship by accident. And thirdly-”

 

“So you did appear by accident,” She accused.

 

“I did. But I must tell you, there is much to say about the occurrences before that.” He told her, and he flew off her shoulder and floated next to a tree near her. “Come sit, this story is a long jumble,” Curious, she did.

 

“I will proceed now,” He stated, and Maxine couldn’t help but smile- she would never get over the way he talked in her language.

 

“Let us imagine. Take all the years that you have lived, and all the years Annora has lived, and multiply them by ten fingers, three times. Maybe more. That, Maxine, is how long I have been alive,” He started. “Norians who are at this number of years are usually ending their life-span. I would tell you our process of decomposition, but that is not what I am here to tell you. As you can see, I am…” He paused. “Young. Or at least at my full adult state. I do not know why I have lived this long. Your ship and people intrigued me. I had nothing to lose. I simply wanted to explore, but then you had cut the station wires…”

 

Jagger talked. From a reverse perspective, Maxine had never heard Jagger talk so long, or with such complexity. He was not easily distracted by the leaves around them, and none of his childish phrases he had packed up were evident. He spoke about how he had born in a family of twelve with him as the third youngest, and both his parents. He went to institutions where Norians learned many things, but none of which were as complex as what humans could learn, he described. They had believed themselves to be the only living creatures aside from plant life. He told them how his parents had passed away, and how he spent countless years chipping away at diamond, which was required to allow the core of their planet to function.

 

“So you were a miner,” Maxine said, a bit amused, as she couldn’t imagine him ever holding a pick-ax, small or large.

 

“No, a diamond-chipper,” Jagger corrected, “I chipped diamonds. At least, that is the translation I have found most accurate.” Maxine shook her head, smiling.

 

He’d done this, but he wasn’t satisfied enough. So he tried to learn more, new things, different things, and all his people had claimed he was wasting his time, that he should do things more productive. He came back as a diamond-chipper, went back to try and study old records, back to a diamond-chipper, and so on. Then, his people began to realize something was wrong with him. He wasn’t aging, like the others. His younger siblings caught up to him. Then they died, one by one. His older siblings died. The siblings younger than him died. His entire generation passed away, and he was left alone.

 

“I had no purpose,” Jagger said, quietly. “I was not shunned, as Norians are a collective people, but I was strange and like a cog that would not fit into their smoothly running engine. I wandered for so long.”

 

Maxine was astonished. She had known that Norians lived for a long time, but she had failed to comprehend just how old Jagger was, not even in comparison to other Norians, but as a creature all on his own. He may not have known as much about the universe as other humans did due to limited resources, but in that instance Maxine recognized something in him. The same character, the same way he held himself the way that Annora did, a weight that only seemed to increase with longevity and time. It hadn’t shown before, because he had seemed so carefree, almost like a child, with a curiosity and eagerness to learn new things, to soak up information, to gain knowledge, and-oh.

 

He was just like her.

 

He had wanted to learn about everything. He wanted to know more. He wanted to grow. But when time and happenstance had taken away his family, his friends, his whole life- everything had dulled.

 

Jagger was lonely.

 

He was lonely, she realized, far lonelier than even herself; she couldn’t comprehend the amount of time he had sat in his own loneliness, on that small, boulder-sized planet, mining away for hundreds of years, trying to find fulfillment, but gaining nothing. Perhaps he had wandered on her ship with an all-or-nothing mindset, the same as her when she had released the wires anchoring her to the station, and to the world.

 

“It was coincidence that I stumbled on your ship,” He told her, “And it made me fearful, that I was leaving everything I knew, once I realized you had closed the doors and set off. It was not what I imagined after years of desolation. I felt a little bit…what was it you said? Shellfish.”

 

“Selfish.”

 

“Selfish. I felt like I was abandoning everything because nothing felt purposeful for me anymore. I was hoping for what, I do not know. Maybe for the curse of longevity to end, maybe to find new purpose, I do not know. But I was there, so I tried to make something out of it. I did not at all expect to find a self-destructive human in worse shape than I.” He smiled.

 

“I was not self-destructive,” Maxine muttered.

 

“You were poised to. But the meaning behind my story is this: You cannot wallow, Maxine. You cannot reverse the past, nor can you predict the future. You must make the most of what is given to you. Interpret that as you wish. You cannot say Annora left without you in mind, just as you cannot say that she will remember you in the future. She is here. Your family is on Johannes. But time passes differently, you said? So then stay here a while, it cannot be more than a few moons on Johannes at the longest, no? See what happens.” He wrapped his tiny arms around her neck as far as they would go.

 

“What…are you doing?”

 

“I am hugging you! It is a human expression of affection. It can be delivered through-”

 

“I know what a hug is, Jagger,” She said bemusedly, but then lifted her hand and cradled him. “Thank you. I don’t think…I don’t know in which direction I would have gone if you weren’t here. You risked a lot to come with me, so thank you for that, I really mean it.”

 

“Finally! Gratitude! You may show your appreciation for me with pit-za.” He said triumphantly.

 

“Guys, lunch is ready! We have pizza!” Annora called from the door. Jagger shot up, and the corners of Maxine's lips turned up. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk why the note from my previous chapter is still on this one...on the other hand, sorry about this chapter being shorter than the first one, i promise i'm working on it.
> 
> kudos are love <3

**Author's Note:**

> More parts coming? Sorry for the cliff? Lots of love!


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